


Starlight, Star Bright

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (brief & non graphic), AOS Advent 2016, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, prompt: wish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8741641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: Three birthday wishes, spanning a decade of Daisy's life, and their fulfilment.-TW: Brief mention of implied domestic violence.





	

For the [AOS Advent](http://aosadvent2016.tumblr.com/) challenge. Prompt: Wish.

-

“Mary! Mary-Sue, are you listening to me?!” 

She wasn’t, but they didn’t care. Already, it was like an echo in her ears. She huddled on her bed, by the window, hugging her knees and looking outside. Snow had covered the yard in a thin layer of white, glistening gently in the moonlight. The sky was clear of clouds, and dotted with stars. It looked like it would be fresh and crisp out there, if a little nose biting: far different from the stuffy, oppressive air in here. Mary took a deep breath, wiped furiously at her tears, and looked up at the stars. 

She studied them, dragging her eyes over their wonder until the clenched feeling in her gut and the sting of the red welts on her arms began to fade. It had become something of a ritual of hers. Her parents, or so they called themselves, would eventually come to the conclusion that going to bed without dinner was sufficient punishment for whatever infraction she had caused and leave her be, and she would wait under the watchful eye of the stars for that to happen. When she was a kid, she’d used to believe they were protecting her somehow. She knew better now, but she held onto the ritual. The only other thing to do was give in to the violence, and she was stronger than that. However else she doubted herself, she knew she was stronger than that.

Mary smiled at the thought. It was always nice to have a reminder.

“That’s better,” she whispered to herself, under her breath. 

With a shaking finger, she reached out and drew a cake on the window. They’d always told her that her birthday was tomorrow, but they never did much about it anyway, so why not get the jump on it early? Take control? 

 _Make a wish,_ an impulse insisted. It wasn’t like she’d never had a birthday cake in her life. Ninety percent of the homes she’d had so far had in fact been very supportive of the idea. In some ways, that made it worse, but at least it gave her the power to recreate the feeling for herself now. Embellish it, even, with the rose-coloured glasses one tended to have for times past. Steeling herself with as much love as she could muster, Mary took a deep breath, and exhaled as she drew her finger across the condensation-candle-marks; for all intents and purposes, blowing them out. 

 _I wish,_ she thought to herself, willing it to be true so hard she clenched her eyes closed with her finger still on the window. _I wish I could get out of here. I wish that I was free._

And soon enough, she was.

She got out of the bad home, and then out of the system. She dropped her name and all her belongings and named herself for the sky that had saved her all this time. She bought a van and lived on the road, with her own people, by her own rules. For the most part, she loved it. She truly did. But a little part of her did not.

This was the part that fixated on her parents – her birth parents – unable to leave them behind with everything else. The part that wondered why they’d left her. Where they were. _Who_ they were. The part that insisted she would always be an orphan brat, tossed around, uprooted or uprooting herself. Self-sabotaging when nobody else would do it for her. The part that stayed empty, never quite allowing her to feel fully satisfied. 

Skye stared that part in the eye one day. She had tracked her parents to an organisation called Shield. Superheroes and the like – which, she had to admit, was sort of awesome; were her parents superheroes? She was hacking Shield from a diner, just a light traipse through their files, to see what she could see. It was a coffee-and-cake kind of job. And if, maybe, she’d brought a candle to stick in the cupcake, well that was her own bittersweet private joke, now wasn’t it? 

With a glance over her shoulder, she flicked a cigarette lighter and lit the candle, and closed her eyes. 

_I wish that I could find them. I wish for somewhere to belong._

“Hey, no open flames in here,” the owner grumbled, flicking his tea-towel in irritation as he stormed around the counter to shut her down. 

Skye rolled her eyes, and retorted in the same tone: 

“Hey, no dramatic personal moments in here.” 

She blew out the candle – to appease the owner, and because wax was starting to drip onto her cake. Then she began her search.

Nothing turned up. Nothing useful, anyway. It took her weeks to eke out one trail, and then more weeks to find the dead end that inevitably cropped up. It took her years, actually, before she stumbled upon something of a jackpot. Or rather. Got kidnapped by one. 

By Shield, specifically.

The organisation that, it turns out, had been protecting her all this time. Not the stars after all, but an organisation that strove toward them. Or defended against them. Or sometimes apparently could not decide which. But all the same – and in all its iterations – there was always somebody at Shield looking out for her. And she looked out for them, too, which was sort of a new feeling in many ways. She’d had groups before, gangs, but never this. Never a team. Never a family in the way some of Shield seemed to be. She’d crashed on couches before, and futons and all that and once, a pool table, but never in a room that she owned, in an apartment she’d bought for her two best friends: brilliant minds, hardy survivors, and kind souls. Although she’d have to be on a lot of pain medication to put it in so many words – at least, without taking on “kind souls in _luuurve”_ at the end.

A knuckle rapped on the door.

“Dai-sy!” Jemma called, her voice exaggeratedly sing-song for dramatic effect. She’d probably been up four hours already, but Daisy couldn’t find it within herself to roll her eyes. Instead, she sat up straighter, beckoned her visitor in, and snorted with laughter as the illustrious, infamously in-sync FitzSimmons practically fell over themselves and each other to get through the doorway first. 

In the end, Fitz actually made the lead, and all but dove for the bed, tray in hand. He scrambled after it as Daisy prevented it from upending, and Jemma trotted in after with classic confidence and charm. She held a single elegant daisy in a vase, which Daisy accepted with a grace worthy of such a gift over Fitz’ head, as Fitz scrambled to ensure the tray was still remotely presentable. Satisfied, he gestured to it as if re-presenting. 

“Cake?” Daisy wondered, raising a quizzical eyebrow. “You’re giving me cake for breakfast?”

“It’s always time for cake.” Fitz presented a fork. Daisy turned her raised eyebrow on Jemma, who shrugged, and leapt onto the bed to join them, her own fork in hand. 

“Life is short!” Jemma declared, and Daisy had to agree. She gestured for them all to join her, only to wave her hands protectively over it before they could dig in. 

“I have to make a wish!”

It was a strange request, given the general circumstances of their lives surrounding this moment, but neither Fitz nor Simmons questioned it. They waited patiently for Daisy to close her eyes – which, they insisted later, was definitely not because she could break their hands with both eyes still closed if they’d tried to sneak a bite – and make her wish, but for all their patience, Daisy found herself shifting. What did she wish for? World peace? Immortality? Those always had a catch. Pancakes? By the smell of things, FitzSimmons already had that covered. So… This was taking a while.

And then it settled over Daisy like a soft snowfall.

_I wish to find it this hard to think of a wish for the rest of my life._

She opened her eyes.  
  
“Okay, I’m ready.”

FitzSimmons shook their heads.

“No, see-“

“-now we have to sing.” 

They cleared their throats and launched into a classically cringe-worthy rendition of _Happy Birthday._ Daisy cringed obligingly, and blew out the imaginary candle, and then dug into the rich, sticky mudcake with two of her best friends in the world, and a smile on her face that could have lit the sky she’d wished to all those years ago.


End file.
